CUE 2014-‐2015 £1K Competition Awards CUE £1K Competition Winners & Finalists 2014-‐2015 Technology & Life Sciences Stream Winners Cambridge Cardiology (Paul De Sciscio, Jacob Brubert, Ingrid Wong, Romilde Kotze) Aortic Stenosis is a heart condition affecting 6 million people across Europe. The only definitive therapy is valve replacement traditionally performed via open heart surgery. Catheter-‐based intervention has significant advantages over open heart surgery in terms of reduced mortality, hospital stay and recovery time. Unfortunately the design of catheter-‐based valves make them a once-‐off procedure limiting their use to high-‐risk patients aged >75 years. At Cambridge Cardiology we believe that catheter-‐based valve replacement should be the standard of care for all patients with Aortic Stenosis. To achieve this we have developed a first of its kind removable transcatheter valve. Sinclair Fire (James Popper, Chris Goodfellow) Sinclair Fire develops and manufactures products leveraging its unique portfolio of fire detection and response intellectual property. The company's primary innovation is the Sinclair Kitchen Fire Detector, an infrared fire detection device, designed to respond to fires rapidly and without false alarms, saving lives and reducing the cost of fire damage. The product is targeted at the Residential Construction and Social Housing sectors. MOFs i-‐Teams (Dr. David Fairen-‐Jimenez, T. Tian, Andrew Marsden, Thomas Fry, Dr. Claudia Percivalle) Metal-‐organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous materials which can store and release gases. At the same pressure, a tank filled with MOFs can store 4x as much gas as an empty tank. Historically, MOFs have been synthesised as powders, using binder or pressure to shape them into pellets. Our patented technology enables the manufacture of MOFs as large pellets without the need for binder or pressure. Our monolithic MOF brings advantages of mechanical robustness, hydrophobicity, and 3x the volumetric capacity of traditional powdered MOFs. We aim to use this new technique to manufacture a range of MOFs to meet the needs of different markets. Tricel (Mihaela-‐Andreea Voicescu, Edward Tan, Chikai Lai) Despite significant scientific advancement, cancer is still a leading cause of death and economic burden. Studies show that the failure rate of cancer medicines during studies in humans is more than 90%. Specifically, the challenge comes in finding 1 CUE 2014-‐2015 £1K Competition Awards results from animal studies to predict results in humans. This is the problem Tricel is trying to solve by creating a platform technology based on cancer stem cells that can add value to preclinical cancer research. This technology can be exploited by various entities researching novel cancer therapies from pharmaceutical companies to university research laboratories to improve the outcome of the studies. Technology & Life Sciences Stream Runner-‐ups FlexSolar (Reza Saberi Moghaddam, Mojtaba Abdi-‐Jalebi, Sir Richard Friend, Ehsan Abdi) FlexSolar has developed a flexible organic solar cell technology based on materials synthesis, which promises substantial cost reduction through enabling low-‐ temperature fabrication techniques and roll-‐to-‐roll processing for high volume manufacturing. Its potential applications include consumer electronics such as backpacks, smart phones and tablets, with addressable market as large as £67b in 2022. Congentis (Tim Xu, Ce Zhang, Kent Werner, Maha Almalki, Christopher Burch, Benoit Renvoise) Cogentis Pharmaceuticals' mission is to develop and commercialize an innovative therapeutic breakthrough for Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders in order to improve patients' quality of life and reduce the burden of disease on their families, providers, and the overall healthcare system. Jessica Toh 76% of caregivers of young children want to change something about their child's sleep, from frequent night waking to sleeping too few hours. The long-‐term consequences of poor sleep patterns are known to be slow growth, chronic irritability, behavioural problems, poor school performance, and family disruption. Our new technology combines non-‐contact sensors, cloud analytics, and a mobile app to determine age-‐appropriate and customised ways to improve a child's sleep and therefore overall wellbeing. UroLogic (Nawar Al-‐Zebari, Igor Romanov, Ismael Moreno-‐Gomez) In the UK, there are over 250.000 serious urinary tract infections per year contracted from indwelling urinary catheters. This accounts for up to 40% of all infections resulting in an annual mortality rate of over 500 cases costing the NHS in excess of £0.5 billion per annum. A major contribution to this is believed to be due to flaws in the Foley catheter design. We introduce a novel urinary catheter from smart materials that will reduce the number of urinary-‐tract infections. 2 CUE 2014-‐2015 £1K Competition Awards Social Enterprise Stream Winners Paramis (Phil Grayeski, Kayla Miele, Edward Tan, George Grillo) Paramis will develop a novel filtration to process acidic whey, a by-‐product and environmental pollutant, from the Greek Yogurt industry. Acidic whey processing will drastically reduce the environmental impact of these practices by recycling purified water back to the manufacturer, but also, utilize the remaining water and isolated whey protein to provide nutritious lean protein supplements and clean water to undernourished communities. We will utilize revenue to pay distribution costs of these foodstuffs to local communities. Aripo (Tandadzo Matanda) 450 babies die each and every hour around the world, and many of these die because of inadequate neonatal care in Sub-‐Sahara Africa. According to UNICEF up to 42% of the 4 million global neonatal deaths are results of result hypothermia. Thus the problem we are trying to tackle is a simple one: how do keep these babies warm, in clinics with no electricity and limited funding? Aripo Neonatal Care is a social enterprise, which aims to drastically change neonatal care in Sub-‐Sahara Africa and around the globe. Through the use of specially designing bio-‐fuelled incubator units, and hands on training and education on neonatal best practice. These incubators will be affordable, simple to make, easy to use, and will be made from sustainable and locally sourced materials that are readily available in most rural African settings. Madanyu (Maximilian Bock, Aftab Jalia) Madanyu, Gujarati for 'little elephant', represents the growing potential for prosperity through empowering the world’s youth. We are a not-‐for-‐profit social enterprise facilitating computer literacy for children in the developing world. Since our launch in summer 2014, we have connected with 6 schools across India and Kenya, provided context appropriate computer kits, and successfully trained over 100 computer novices to write code and control hardware components in less than 3 days. Alongside the Madanyu workshops for students, we provide computer training to school teachers and local instructors to ensure long-‐term self-‐sustainability of the programme. 3 CUE 2014-‐2015 £1K Competition Awards Social Enterprise Stream Runner-‐ups Fruitannia (Vanessa Stefanak) Fruitannia is a social enterprise concept intended to benefit both the local community and a national children's' charity fighting hunger (Magic Breakfast). Fruitannia will feature a range of artisanal preserves, handcrafted in small batches, using surplus heritage fruit from the gardens of Cambridge University and sold to fine retail outlets. Rule, Fruitannia! Ultrasafe Ultrasound (Sonya Davey, Abhishek Biswas, Samir Devalaraja, Haris Godil, Neil Davey, Otilia Strecu) It is illegal for doctors to disclose the sex of a fetus in both India and China. However, due to the difficulty in monitoring secret doctor-‐patient interactions, the practice is rampant and sex ratios in India and China continue to worsen. Ultrasafe Ultrasound has created a technology that blurs the genital organ of a fetus on a live ultrasound machine, thus preventing doctors from determining the sex of the fetus. The Whistle (Ella McPherson, Scott Limbrick) Increasingly, the documentation of human rights violations by bystanders is facilitated by mobile technologies, with social media enabling the dissemination of this documentation. As a result, journalists and human rights defenders are faced with a large flow of information purporting to shed light on violations. The Whistle’s digital platform will support verification of this information by assisting citizen witnesses to supplement their digital reports of violations with corroborating information (for example, metadata). At the same time, The Whistle will provide verification training for human rights advocates, journalists, and others, to allow them to more quickly and effectively verify information. 4 CUE 2014-‐2015 £1K Competition Awards Software Stream Winners Sponsoo (Andreas Kitzing, Béla Julian Anda, Christian Kaspar, Konstantin Möllers, Tobias Tilly) Sponsoo is a data-‐driven online marketplace that connects athletes or sport teams with sponsors. Our goal is to make sponsorship transparent and easily available for everyone. We aim to fundamentally disrupt the sports sponsorship industry and to provide funding for hundred thousands of sports projects all over the world. Teams can create a profile on sponsoo.com, and put their sponsorship offerings up for an auction. Sponsors search the database and bid for the perfect athletes or teams to sponsor. DateSafe (David Purcell) In 2015 more people than ever are set to meet people in real life for dates after chatting online using sites such as match.com, e-‐harmony and tinder. DateSafe is quick tool that gives the user confidence that the person they are due to meet is the person they say they are. Searching only on the mobile number they have given you we verify their name, age, marital status, and provide you with a selection of pictures. This is all done in a legal non-‐intrusive manner and leaves no footprint. Silent Concert (Marco Fiocco) Have you ever been to a rock or pop live music concert and heard clear sound? Lucky you! What about echoes? Terrible basses? No speaker configuration will solve this problem ever, because it depends on the architecture of the venue. Wouldn't be cool to have the option to go to concerts with your favourite headphones and listen to a high-‐quality audio stream directly from the mixer board? Software Stream Runner-‐ups Slick Stream (Ashley Scillitoe, Carlo Quaglia, Musabbir Abdul Majeed) SlickStream will allow you to virtually build or upgrade a bike, then keeps track of maintenance by looking at your cycling data, and suggests when components need replacing or upgrading. Last Mile Technologies (Alan Nichol, Alexander Weidauer) treev is the fastest way to access all your work in the cloud, keeping you focused. 5